Our Lips Are Sealed
by pherede
Summary: "It's not a face that anyone could love, and he is glad to hide it away." Some things are not meant for saying.


This is the first time he has faced a mirror without the anonymity of his mask since the day they lowered him, screaming and jerking, into the Pit.

There were no mirrors in the Pit. Even the men who'd fastened his ropes could never be so cruel; a mirror, to watch the slow decay of your eroding youth, would have been a punishment beyond what men could bear.

Now, though, he has a greater reason to avoid his own reflection than any of the furrow-faced old men in their dim prison. He can smile, moving his skin against the mask; he can probe his ruined cheeks with his tongue, and that is enough to tell him that he hardly looks human anymore.

And more: without the mask, he has only a few minutes to wolf down his food, to slam back supplements and medicines with tasteless thick protein shakes, to perform the banal tasks of hygiene and exercise, and then gasp and shiver with growing stabs of pain until the mask is affixed again and the soft chill of the nebulizers once again bathes his flesh. It's seven minutes, maybe eight, and he tells himself he doesn't have time to look in the mirror.

It's true. He can only do this once every eight hours, and he needs every second of it to eat and care for himself. Because he must care for himself, to protect Talia.

But this is the second time he's had his mask off in this eight-hour stretch, and already the pain is setting in. Of course he could not pre-medicate as he would normally; the blend of drugs is delicate, and the danger of building tolerance is high enough with his thrice-a-day disruptions. So there's no peak to come down from, only an insistent, stabbing pain that already makes him want to groan, twenty seconds after the mask peeled back from his face.

And what he sees is awful, worse than he'd imagined. He can still see places where the tender flesh of his lips remains, in scraps and patches; the shape of his mouth and jaw are intact, the bone well-knit. But there are gnarled scars all over, pink places scarcely healed, and wretched twists of ropy white skin that draw into unrecognizable forms.

It is not a face that anyone could love, and he is glad to hide it away.

And yet, she loves him. He knows that he is not his face, and this only bolsters that knowledge: her kisses on the skin around his mask, her sly-eyed teasing, her lithe figure that slips between his sheets at night- all these things are for him, Bane, and not for what lies under his mask.

He also knows that she has seen him, seen every stage of his healing. And he notices that she has never asked him for even a few seconds without the mask, not even for a single kiss.

He knows what she can't ask for. And he knows, because Talia's deceptive face has never been able to hide a thing from him, that she _does_ want to ask.

All of these things gnaw at him, churning and chewing throughout the rest of the day, and by the time he hears the door of his room creak open in the dead of night, terrible thoughts are beginning to coalesce in his mind. He wants so much to kiss her.

At first it's not so overwhelming; she is soft, she is receptive to his touch, and as he traces her body with his fingertips she gasps and moans as beautifully as she ever has. And he has always enjoyed this, doing this not only with her but _to_ her. His pleasure is inextricably bound to her arousal.

Then she kisses him: first over the eye, reaching up to clasp his head between her hands, and then just below, on the soft flesh between the strap of his mask and the base of his eyelid. She kisses his ear; she kisses his neck. And then she kisses his mask, even though he cannot feel it- her lips move across the twisted metal and tortuous lines- he imagines that he can feel the warmth of her breath through the filter of his mask, and he presses his lips against the unforgiving surgical steel.

A roar is building up inside him, a rage, an inferno. He breathes in and he catches just the very edge of her scent, so different from the squalor and sweat of the girl in the pit and yet so subtly the same. She is kissing his ear, tracing the whorl of it with her tongue.

He cannot bear this.

He flings her on her back, overcome with desperation and loss, and sheathes himself in her more aggressively than he has ever dared before. She buckles under him, keens, struggles to brace herself, and he plunges into her with something approaching abandon (though he will never let himself go entirely; it would be too easy to break her, and there is no pleasure for her in brutality).

It's almost good enough to make him forget. Then he feels her hand worming down between them, her fingers questing; she is not a woman who comes from being penetrated, and when they do this- when they fuck- she rides him in ecstasy but it's her small fingers that flicker and dance and it's her hand that gets her off.

He stares down at her, fighting the blinding haze that fills his vision; her teeth are bared, her hair wild on the pillow, and between strokes he can feel her hand jerking, circling on her clit.

It might be enough for her. It's just not enough for him.

He claws at his mask, half out of his mind, pushing at the straps as he thrusts into her, his head full of half-complete images and memories of pain and so, so much regret.

"What are you doing," she gasps, stilling her hand; he can hear it in her voice, that she is terrified he'll take it off, that somewhere deep inside she wants him to. _She can never say it,_ he thinks, and all caution is gone from him like a shred of paper ripped away by the wind. He pulls, he twists, and the mask is off.

He's numb for a moment, mouth open and gasping, breathing the free air as he looks down at her white face; she is staring up at him in horror and fascination, but he can still feel her clutching and pulsing around him, and of her mouth and her groin he knows which one can bear what he wants to do.

It's harder to pull out of her than it was to pull away his mask, but he does it; and in a moment, the ache and throb are nothing beside the beginning twinges of pain. But he's committed now; he will have this. He takes her by the thighs, slings her ankles up over his shoulders, ignores her protests and her frantic small sounds; the remnants of his lips, the places that are not numb, close over her slit. He feels her; he tastes her. It's better than the first sunrise he saw after the pit, and just as much a revelation, salt as tears and coppery as blood and full of her scent, the most familiar things from his memories and yet the most alien, the most new.

His tongue slides, up and down, exploring; then he presses it flat against her and drags. The sounds she makes, the sounds she makes, he will die, he is already in agony and he has not even begun yet to feel pain.

She is still begging him: _don't take it off, the pain, oh god_. He's not sure that she even knows what she's saying anymore. His nerves are on fire, sharp cramping spasms only made worse by the unusual way he's using his muscles, but he thinks he can hold on, it's not so bad, he is strong for Talia because she needs him-

But the pain doesn't grow simply, like a sapling into a tree; there is no real pain, and then pain is there, absolutely present, spiraling out of control, drawing his vision into pinpricks of humming light.

It is at this precise moment that Talia loses her words and begins to buck against him, groaning, and he knows that what he's doing is _right_. She would never ask him to take off the mask, but he has taken it off, and he cannot back down now.

He tries at first to suckle her, but his patchwork lips (though they enunciate well enough) fatigue so easily that he cannot maintain suction, and the pain is exquisite. If this had been a planned excursion, with the preparatory mask functions and countdown timers, he would be in no pain now; but he would be numb, unfeeling, untasting. And the pleasure in feeling her, melting-soft and ruffle-edged and delicately structured, is nearly as great as the pleasure of tasting her.

Nearly as great as the pain oh god oh _fuck_ the pain, which stabs through his face in jolts and searing flashes now. He flattens his tongue against her and feels her respond, holding that slow dragging pressure even though with every heartbeat there is a surge of pain that sets his fight-or-flight mechanism roaring. Again and again he overcomes it, pushing her closer to the edge (and she's already so close, he can feel it curling tight inside her, ready to spring free) until she is gasping and jerking, thighs trembling as she strains toward that awful moment.

The pain is too great. He cannot last. It's overpowering him now; his ears ring and his vision narrows, pain pain _pain pain_ PAIN. Throbbing, shooting agonies arc through his mouth, little lightnings of torture. He adopts the rhythm and pulse of it, thrusting his tongue against her hood with each shock and relaxing it with each respite. It's a fast, steady beat, and Talia shudders under it as if she's being flogged. When it is, in fact, his flesh that feels the thousand cuts of the lash, the echoes of rag-bound feet kicking and the assault of stone knives, all of the things he withstood for her and all of the things he will never, never describe to her.

He cannot bear to see her carry that burden of guilt, so he will carry his burden of pain, and let the bow and arch of her back be from pleasure instead. He is inexhaustible, even as his face turns into hot coals and new razors. His torment and his determination, as they always have, urge her upward and forward and further, pushing her and coaxing her to _leap_.

When she comes, he bears it still, rocking his tongue against her even though tears spill freely down his cheeks and even his breathing is beginning to fail in the onslaught of that pain. He is losing consciousness; his eyes are blank and spreading white, and the voice pours out of him in a low endless moan that vibrates through her flesh and pushes her into another rictus of ecstasy, kicking against the mattress and against his ribs, twisting and keening.

It is the impact of her foot against his side that holds him to reality for a few more precious seconds, long enough to feel prickling numbness spread through his hands as his wrecked body prepares to succumb to the darkness, long enough to see her flushed and still-panting face loom over him as she struggles to slide his mask back into place. There is the briefest moment of cool mist, numbing agent nebulized across his skin in a faint swath of relief; then he bats her hands aside and wrenches the mask away.

There is one more thing he cannot live without.

He cannot speak for pain and she cannot say a word of what's behind her gaze, but she places her thumb gently on the scarred and wretched ribbon of his lower lip, and her lashes dip down over her sorrowful eyes as she leans down to kiss him. Her mouth is cool and sweet and velvet and he could die, he could die like this, he would not regret a moment of it.

Then the softness of her is gone, and his mouth is invaded with surgical steel, and he submits and closes his eyes as the buckles clamp down. He is masked once more.

After that she collapses on top of him; she is still heaving from the aftermath of his ministrations. Twice she opens her mouth and begins to speak, tiny cut-off vocalizations that never form even the edges of words, and he cannot even bring himself to wonder what she's working so hard not to say.

This is, after all, nothing new: he is a creature of pain, born to grieve, and she is the one part of himself that he can protect from that pain. What joy there is to have between them will be hers, whatever the cost; and she will never, _must_ never, ask what was sacrificed for her, or why she is, to him, worthy of all his suffering.

And if there are words left unsaid, they are not lost; they are simply too sacred, too secret, to be trusted to the air, and they must be exchanged through pain and sacrifice and through unswerving trust and through whatever passed between them in that kiss.


End file.
